conversation is an engine

My medical marketing friend asked about a project where we are stimulating dialogue between a group of research/practicing cardiologists and a growing referral base of primary care physicians. The dialogue is designed to help the cardiology group retain mind-share with busy primary care physicians. This dialogue is helped by the fact that many in the cardiology group are recognized as national thought-leaders and regularly publish their findings in top-tier medical journals. It also helps that the dialogue is based around their expert reviews of current cardiology research and practices. These two facts help the dialogue take place and will make it believable.

But say you are marketing a product instead of a group of experts. Say your point for stimulating a dialogue is to learn what you can about practice patterns, referral patterns, purchasing patterns and the like. What steps can you take to ensure dialogue really happens, versus more of the usual one-way selling messages deposited largely unread in the target audience’s laptop?

1.    Don’t think of dialogue marketing as a drive-by tactic. No shooting from the low rider as you reach for the next marketing tactic. Dialogue marketing will truly be about, well, dialogue, which is honest give and take. Commit to continuing the conversation, which is the same as committing to relationship building with your dialogue partners. The bigger rewards are longer-term, just as they are in any relationship.

2.    Be honest. Physicians know you are selling something. In fact, every reader of any words today knows the writer is selling something, if only some subjective way of looking at the world. And we’re largely OK with that—until the writer claims objectivity. That’s when the hackles rise and the mouse clicks on the X. Be persuasive (Melcrum has good comments on persuasive language here), but not over the top—especially with the selling message.

3.    Offer something useful. You may not be a set of top experts in cardiology, but you know your product well. And you know the context of your product. You don’t advise on interventional cardiology or cardiac surgery, but you do advise on how the product is used. Dialogue has to have a reason to exist—a reason that both parties continue to engage. Selling messages won’t provide that glue, so don’t organize a dialogue around them. You must uncover the benefit/reason that speaks into the lives of your target audience.

Marjorie Teresa R. Perez writes in the BusinessMirror about ad agency Leo Burnett increasingly finding their “purpose” in marketing as the evolve into a “HumandKind of company.” Starting with a purpose is essential for dialogue—just as it is essential for life on this planet.

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